Patrick O'Brian: The Truelove

'Perhaps I shall ask Stephen for a blue pill,' he said. 'For a couple of blue pills. I have not been to the head this age.'

He walked forward, the windward side of the quarterdeck emptying at his approach; and as he passed the wheel both the quartermaster at the con and the helmsman turned their heads to look at him. The Surprise instantly came up half a point, the windward leaches of the topsails gave a warning flutter and Jack roared 'Mind your helm, you infernal lubbers. What in Hell's name do you mean by leering at me like a couple of moonsick cowherds? Mind your helm, d'ye hear me there? Mr Davidge, no grog for Krantz or Webber today.'

The quarterdeck looked suitably shocked and grave, but as Jack went down the companion-ladder towards the cabin he heard a gale of laughter from the forecastle. Stephen was still playing and Jack walked in on tiptoe, with a finger to his lips, making those gestures that people use to show that they are immaterial beings, silent, invisible. Stephen nodded to him in an absent way, brought his phrase to a full close and said 'You have come below, I find.'

'Yes,' said Jack. 'Not to put too fine a point on it, I have. I know this is not your time for such things, but I should like to consult you if I may.'

'By all means. I was only working out a few foolish variations on a worthless theme. If what you have to say is of an intimate nature at all let us close the skylight and sit upon the locker at the back.' Most consultations shortly after a ship had left port were for venereal diseases: some seamen were ashamed of their malady, some were not: in general the officers preferred their state not to be known.

'It is not really of an intimate nature,' said Jack, closing the companion nevertheless and sitting on the stern-window locker. 'But I am most damnably hipped... cross even in the morning and much ill-used. Is there a medicine for good temper and general benevolence? A delight in one's blessings? I had thought of a blue pill, with perhaps a touch of rhubarb.'

'Show me your tongue,' said Stephen; and then, shaking his head, 'Lie flat on your back.' After a while he said 'As I thought, it is your liver that is the peccant part; or at least the most peccant of your parts. It is turgid, readily palpable. I have disliked your liver for some time now. Dr Redfern disliked your liver. You have the bilious facies to a marked degree: the whites of the eyes a dirty yellow, greyish-purple half-moons below them, a look of settled discontent. Of course, as I have told you these many years, you eat too much, you drink too much, and you do not take enough exercise. And this bout I have noticed that although the water has been charmingly smooth ever since we left New South Wales, although the boat has rarely exceeded a walking pace, and although we have been attended by no sharks, no sharks at all, in spite of Martin's sedulous watch and mine, you have abandoned your sea-bathing.'

'Mr Harris said it was bad in my particular case: he said it closed the pores, and would throw the yellow bile upon the black.'

'Who is Mr Harris?'

'He is a man with singular powers, recommended to me by Colonel Graham when you were away on your tour of the bush. He gives you nothing but what grows in his own garden or in the countryside, and he rubs your spine with a certain oil; he has performed some wonderful cures, and he is very much cried up in Sydney.'

Stephen made no comment. He had seen too many quite well educated people run after men with singular powers to cry out, to argue or even to feel anything but a faint despair. 'I shall bleed you,' he said, 'and mix a gentle cholagogue. And since we are now quite clear of New South Wales and of your thaumaturge's territory, I advise you to resume both your sea-bathing and your practice of climbing briskly to the topmost pinnacle.'

'Very well. But you do not mean me to take medicine today, Stephen? Tomorrow is divisions, you remember.'

Stephen knew that for Jack Aubrey, as for so many other captains and admirals of his acquaintance, taking medicine meant swallowing improbable quantities of calomel, sulphur, Turkey rhubarb (often added to their own surgeon's prescription) and spending the whole of the next day on the seat of ease, gasping, straining, sweating, ruining their lower alimentary tract. 'I do not,' he said. 'It is only a mixture, to be followed by a series of comfortable enemata.'

Jack watched the steady flow of his blood into the bowl: he cleared his throat and said 'I suppose you have patients with, well, desires?'

'It would be strange if I had not.'

'I mean, if you will forgive a gross expression, with importunate pricks?'

'Sure, I understand you. There is little in the pharmacopoeia to help them. Sometimes' - waving his lancet - 'I propose a simple little operation - a moment's pang, perhaps a sigh, then freedom for life, a mild sailing on an even keel, tossed by no storms of passion, untempted, untroubled, sinless- but when they decline, which they invariably do, though they may have protested that they would give anything to be free of their torments, why then unless there is some evident physical anomaly, all I can suggest is that they should learn to control their emotions. Few succeed; and some, I am afraid, are driven to strange wild extremes. But were the case to apply to you, brother, where there is a distinct physical anomaly, I should point out that Plato and the ancients in general made the liver the seat of love: Cogit amare jecur, said the Romans. And so I should reiterate my plea for more sea-bathing, more going aloft, more pumping of an early morning, to say nothing of a fitting sobriety at table, to preserve the organ from ill-considered freaks.' He closed the vein, and having washed his bowl in the quarter-gallery he went on, 'As for the blue devils of which you complain, my dear, do not expect too much from my remedies: youth and unthinking happiness are not to be had in a bottle, alas. You are to consider that a certain melancholy and often a certain irascibility accompany advancing age: indeed, it might be said that advancing age equals ill-temper. On reaching the middle years a man perceives that he is no longer able to do certain things, that what looks he may have had are deserting him, that he has a ponderous great belly, and that however he may yet burn he is no longer attractive to women; and he rebels. Fortitude, resignation and philosophy are of more value than any pills, red, white or blue.'

'Stephen, surely you would never consider me middle-aged, would you?'

'Navigators are notoriously short-lived, and for them middle-age comes sooner than for quiet abstemious country gentlemen. Jack, you have led as unhealthy a life as can well be imagined, perpetually exposed to the falling damps, often wet to the skin, called up at all hours of the night by that infernal bell. You have been wounded the Dear knows how many times, and you have been cruelly overworked. No wonder your hair is grey.'

'My hair is not grey. It is a very becoming buttercup-yellow.'

Jack wore his hair long, clubbed and tied with a broad black bow. Stephen plucked the bow loose and brought the far end of plait round before his eyes.

'Well I'm damned,' said Jack, looking at it in the sunlight.

'Well I'm damned; you are quite right. There are several grey hairs... scores of grey hairs. It is positively grizzled, like a badger-pie. I had never noticed.'

Six bells.

'Will I tell you something more cheerful?" asked Stephen.

'Please do,' said Jack, looking up from his queue with that singularly sweet smile Stephen had known from their earliest acquaintance.

'Two of our patients have been to the two islands you mean to pass. That is to say Philips has been to Norfolk Island and Owen has been to Easter Island. Philips knew the place before it was abandoned as a penal station, and he knew it extremely well, having spent - I believe Martin said a year, for it was to him that Philips spoke about the place - in any event a great while after the ship to which he belonged was wrecked. I forget her name: a frigate.'